Key Takeaways
- Lakeburg Legacies focuses on matchmaking in a city-building sim, fostering happy families for a hundred years.
- Love, Ghostie tasks players with uniting inhabitants through ghostly interactions, creating chance encounters and cozy moments.
- XCom 2’s expansion emphasizes soldier bonds for better combat effectiveness, with repercussions if a bonded partner dies.
Whether it’s romantic or platonic, love always makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside, and video game developers aren’t unaware of that. A dating aspect is an almost mandatory inclusion in any RPG now, and plays a big role in simulation games too.
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But let’s say your interest doesn’t lie in characters courting you alone, and you just enjoy seeing happy couples. If you want games where you can make characters form bonds between themselves, the pool is much more limited. Fear not, though, as we’ve got recommendations for games where you can pair up characters apart from the protagonist.
8
Lakeburg Legacies
City-building sims often ignore the community aspect to focus on resource management. Lakeburg Legacies is the inverse of that. Instead of playing god, you’re playing matchmaker. True, your community won’t survive without resources, but that’s not the focus of the game.
The goal of Lakeburg Legacies is to take a villager who’s single and ready to mingle and create a thriving township through them. You’re advised on what characters make a good pairing and engage in events like first dates and breakups. You can choose to simulate up to a hundred years of happy families.
7
Love, Ghostie
- Released
-
August 14, 2024
- Developer(s)
-
Janbeh Games
- Publisher(s)
-
Janbeh Games
- Steam Deck Compatibility
-
Unknown
Love, Ghostie is what would happen if the haunting spirits in Ghost Master had more romantic ideals. The game starts with you getting a manor free of rent (only after you die, though), and your task is to make sure the inhabitants get together.
4:10
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Instead of using your ghostly powers to scare the residents, you use them to create chance encounters and get them talking. You may take someone’s possessions and leave them near another tenant’s room or have characters do chores together so they can interact. Love, Ghostie is a bit saccharine, but it’s also incredibly cute and cozy.
Leaving romance aside, XCom 2: War Of The Chosen focuses on the ties that bind soldiers risking their lives together. This mechanic isn’t in the base game, but it’s a welcome addition. If two soldiers are regularly sent on missions together, they become bonded. Their familiarity with each other makes them better coordinated and more effective fighters.
If a bonded soldier’s partner gets killed, they go berserk, making them less effective in battle. They ignore your orders entirely and might even retreat. Just don’t let the aliens break their heart, and everything will be fine.
5
Xenoblade Chronicles (Series)
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
- Platform(s)
-
Switch
- Released
-
May 29, 2020
- Developer(s)
-
Monolith Soft
- Publisher(s)
-
Nintendo
- Engine
-
XC2/Torna
- ESRB
-
T For Teen Due To Blood, Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence
- How Long To Beat
-
58 Hours
- Metascore
-
89
The Heart-to-Heart system in Xenoblade Chronicles is largely just for character development, though it does provide your characters an affinity boost. These are optional cutscenes you can view under certain conditions and gain some more insight into the game’s world.
These cutscenes play out as straightforward dating sim dialogue choice sessions, but Shulk isn’t the only one romancing everybody, as happens in so many RPGs. Any active party members who are compatible can have their cute little moments. This system would be carried over to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and X but was dropped for the third mainline entry.
4
Record Of Agarest War (Series)
An obscure tactical RPG series, Record of Agarest War takes the child character mechanic of Fire Emblem and centers the whole game on it. It isn’t your first character who’s the protagonist, but his entire lineage. The games feature a dating sim element where the happier your marriage is, the better your children’s stats will be. This spans multiple generations.
Starting with the second game, the dating sim element even punishes you for not looking after your love interests. If your character has a joyless marriage, his children will have worse stats. As Alice Cooper said, the secret to a happy marriage is to keep going on dates.
3
Crusader Kings 3
The Middle Ages were not the best time period to be born, and Crusader Kings 3 adopts a suitably grim outlook on marriage. Rather than focusing on lovey-dovey relationships, marriage in Crusader Kings 3 is done for one sole purpose: to extend your dynasty and inherit the claim to as many thrones as possible. Once your main character dies – and they will – you can play as their closest living heir.
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Essentially, the main goal of pairing up characters in Crusader Kings 3 is to keep you from losing the game. Have children, marry them off to another state, kill off anyone who has a better claim to the throne, and keep your bloodline from becoming peasants. In real life, this would be a downer (and we haven’t even mentioned the incest mechanics yet); as a grand strategy, it’s incredibly fun.
2
The Sims (Series)
Being a life simulation series, The Sims introduced character pairing mechanics with the very first entry – but it was very basic back then, centering mainly on getting two Sims to talk and flirt until they wanted a baby (and then having the baby taken away once your run devolved into chaos).
With each entry, the system grew more complex, introducing relationship dynamics and personality traits that influenced whether two characters would make a good pairing. The base game of The Sims 4 went free-to-play in 2022, so it’s a good entry point to start pairing Sims up.
1
Fire Emblem (Series)
Fire Emblem: Genealogy Of The Holy War
- Released
-
May 14, 1996
- Engine
-
Unity
- ESRB
-
t
- How Long To Beat
-
50 Hours
By now, the Fire Emblem series is jokingly referred to by fans as a dating sim with tactical RPG elements. Starting with Awakening, the series extended the support system to let you pair up characters and get them romantically involved, unlocking child characters in the process. You could do the same in Fates and Three Houses; however, the roots of this mechanic go back much further.
Released in 1996, Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has an intricate character pairing mechanic, where soldiers develop affinities for each other by being together in battle often and eventually having children with stats dependent on their parents. If couples or siblings are together in battle, they gain a damage boost. Few people have played Genealogy because it was only released in Japan, and it’s hard as nails. If you’re up to the challenge, however, this game’s character pairing is more elaborate than future entries.
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